Voter Fraud Bias

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at New York University Law School, 

Fraud by individual voters is both irrational and extremely rare. Most citizens who take the time to vote offer their legitimate signatures and sworn oaths with the gravitas that this hard-won civic right deserves....Because voter fraud is essentially irrational, it is not surprising that no credible evidence suggests a voter fraud epidemic. There is no documented wave or trend of individuals voting multiple times, voting as someone else, or voting despite knowing that they are ineligible.

 So, if this is so, then as the Riddler would say, "Riddle me this,"

In February, the Pew Center on the States released a study called Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient showing that about 24 million U.S. voter registrations were no longer valid or had significant inaccuracies.

The research found: more than 1.8 million dead people listed as voters; about 2.75 million with voter registrations in more than one state; and about 12 million voter records with incorrect addresses, meaning either the voters moved or errors in the information make it unlikely any mailings can reach them. 

The Brennan Center for Justice calls itself 

...a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on the fundamental issues of democracy and justice.

The Pew Center on the States says,

The Pew Center on the States provides nonpartisan reporting and research, advocacy, and technical assistance to help states deliver better results and achieve long-term fiscal health by investing in programs that provide the strongest returns.

And yet they have reached disparate conclusions regarding voter fraud.

From the September 16th, 2012, Columbus Dispatch, 

More than one out of every five registered Ohio voters is probably ineligible to vote. In two counties, the number of registered voters actually exceeds the voting-age population: Northwestern Ohio’s Wood County shows 109 registered voters for every 100 eligible, while in Lawrence County along the Ohio River it’s a mere 104 registered per 100 eligible. 

And yet we hear over and over again that voter fraud is not an issue. It has no impact on elections.

Ohio is crucial to the 2012 Presidential elections, and yet time and time again we are told that it would be unfair to require proper identification in order to vote.

We require a photo ID to buy a beer. Is that more important that voting?



http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/policy_brief_on_the_truth_about_voter_fraud/ 
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/09/16/voter-rolls-in-ohio-are-bloated-experts-say.html
http://www.pewstates.org/about/mission-85899372169
http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=85899370677

Voter ID Nonsense

Not too long ago, I went to a restaurant with my son. When he ordered a beer, the waitress asked for his ID. A few days back, I was at a convenience store when a young man asked the clerk for a pack of cigarettes. They carded him as well. When I picked up my prescriptions at the drug store they required a proof of identity before they would give the medicine to me.

With these facts in mind, I wonder. How do seniors and minorities manage to buy alcohol? How do get the store to give them cigarettes? And how do they get the drug store to give them their prescriptions?

Well, you say, they simply pull out a driver's license, or another photo ID, and voila!

Really? It's that simple? Huh. 

A judge in Pennsylvania just blocked a PA voter ID law because he thinks its too hard for seniors and minorities to get an ID in time for the elections. How do they get around? They must all take public transportation. And they don't smoke, and they don't drink.

Democrats say any law requiring voters to show proof of identity is an attempt to prevent minorities and seniors from voting for Obama.

With that logic,

Minorities and seniors must have the lowest lung cancer and alcoholism rates in the world.

Good thing too. They'll never be able to pick up a prescription.

Don't Judge the Player by the Team

I don't know the reasons behind the current strike by National Football Referees, but it sure has raised eyebrows and blood pressures. Officiating sporting events, professional or amateur, has never been an easy thing. Nor has it ever been without controversy.

I suspect that the majority of those who officiate professional sporting events receive hate mail, possibly even death threats. Players who commit errors that lead to their team's defeat do.

Fans gather after a game to scrutinize every play, every decision on and off the field, and every call made by every official. Heated arguments erupt between fan bases of opposing teams. Rivalries sometimes boil over into violence. Sports fans can be very devoted, spending a great deal of their time examining the statistics of an individual player and his or her importance to the game.

So why don't we see the same devotion and passion among people when it comes to choosing their political representatives?

I'm an Orioles fan. I like to know if Adam Jones can hit sliders down and away. I want to know how Matt Wietters bats against left handers.

Politically, I want to know if my congressman will support my views. I want to know my representative's stand on the issues. And, just as I will demonstrate my support for a good ballplayer and my lack of support for a poor one, I will support those who prove to me that they will represent my views in congress.

To do that, I need to understand the issues. I need to see how a given politician reacts to these issues. How else can I make an educated vote? I read the opinions of sports analysts from different organizations to better understand a play or player. I need to do the same with issues and politicians  before I vote.

Sadly, a great many people I know don't see past the party affiliations of the candidates. It's like rooting for a player on your home team regardless of his lack of hustle, his lackluster play on the field, or his inability to follow the manager's orders.

I appreciate ballplayers on many teams. I want my home team to win, but that doesn't stop me from acknowledging the fine play of a player on another team.

If we followed the issues and the politicians as strongly as we follow our sports heroes, we might not be in the fix we're in right now.

For Richer, For Poorer - Tax Equality?

Here are a few hypotheticals for you.

1. You're rich. It's tax time, and you can reduce your tax bill by simply following the opportunities written into the tax code. You don't have to break the law, just follow it.
2. You're middle class. It's tax time, and you can reduce your tax bill by simply following the opportunities written into the tax code. You don't have to break the law, just follow it.
3. You're barely getting by, living week to week, getting by on a minimum wage salary, subsidized housing and food stamps. It's tax time, and by just filling out the tax form properly you need not pay any taxes whatsoever.

What do you do? Is there any difference in your actions if you are rich, middle class, or in abject poverty?

Does being poor give you a righteous entitlement to take advantage of the law and thus pay no taxes?
What about being rich, or middle class?

Here are two more.

1. You own or run a multi-national corporation. It's tax time, and you can reduce your corporate tax bill by simply following the opportunities written into the tax code. You don't have to break the law, just follow it.
2. You own a small business. Your business barely survives year to year. It's tax time, and you can reduce your small business tax bill by simply following the opportunities written into the tax code. You don't have to break the law, just follow it.

Is there a difference? Should there be?

In order to function, any government, like any household, like any business, needs income. That's why we have a tax system. Over the years ours has become labyrinthine, full of deductions, loopholes, escape mechanisms. About 71% of all taxes in the United States are paid by 10% of the population. Nearly half of the workforce pays no tax at all.
After all, you can reduce your tax bill by simply following the opportunities written into the tax code. You don't have to break the law, just follow it.

So whose to blame for this situation? We are.

Both political parties have had opportunities, periods when they controlled both houses of congress and the presidency, even a super-majority. And yet, here we stand. We can blame "special interests," but the truth is we have had the power all along and have not acted. Everyone believes their Senator, their Representative, their President, is the one that will act in our best interest.

And guess what? They have.

Alexis de Tocqueville noted,

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. "

Every time we vote to extend tax breaks to businesses, that is what we are doing. But also, every time we extend the welfare net we are doing the same.

What do you think?

State of Stealth

A battle is being waged in the state of Maryland over the state's desire to expand casino gambling. Huge in the rhetorical arguments of both sides is the claim that more casinos equals more money for education.
History, and the state constitution, teach us one thing. The amount of money collected through the collection of taxes on gambling will equate to a commensurate rise in the total state budget, but the necessary funds for education would have been found regardless.
Look at it this way.
Suppose the state budget included $100 million dollars for education. The state tells us that we don't have sufficient funds to give our children a quality education. Okay, you say. The state promises to allocate the taxes collected from the casinos to education, so give me more gambling statewide.
The first year's tax collection nets $50 million in casino taxes, and you see the education budget rise by $50 million. Ah, you say to yourself, the state was telling the truth. The money did go to education.
But this is a half truth.
You see, the state is obligated to provide a quality education for our children. If that meant to raise the education budget by $50 million that would have occurred whether or not the casinos were taxed. Without the casino tax, either discretionary spending would have suffered, or other taxes would have been raised to cover those discretionary items.
Let's say you live on a fixed income and the cost of food goes up. What do you do? If you have no way to increase your income, you need to pull money from somewhere else in your budget to cover that increase. Maybe you give up going out to the movies. Maybe you cancel your cable subscription. But you still eat. Cable is discretionary, eating is not,(although you can do a better job with the cash you have for food by making better choices at the grocer.)
A less that ethical individual would go to the local food bank and ask for food but not reduce their discretionary spending, thus having their cake and eating while watching the movies too.
This is precisely what the state is doing.
I'm sure spending on education will rise.
But at what cost to the citizens? The casino money came from the citizens in the first place.
Can you say "Stealth Tax?"

Agenda or Responsibility

The Associated Press reported on May 27^th, 2012, that New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli was using the state’s pension fund as a cudgel to influence employers to create company policy to ban discrimination against homosexual or transgendered employees.

Shareholders have the right to present resolutions to companies in an effort to have their voice heard. Often this is done by a group of individuals upset with the company’s performance, perhaps stock prices are not where they were expected to be, or dividends are down.

What DiNapoli is doing is trying to force Exxon Mobil, a U.S. Corporation, to follow the Comptroller’s liberal agenda. Exxon says the measure is unnecessary. The AP quotes Exxon as saying the company already prohibits discrimination of all kinds, referring to itself as a “Meritocracy.”

But DiNapoli wants to add what for him is a feel good policy to the corporation that explicitly focuses on homosexuals and transgendered individuals. He says he has a “double bottom line” for the funds he is entrusted with on the part of all state employees. The income’s important, but so is his social agenda.

In a time of economic uncertainty, shouldn’t his focus be solely on his responsibility to do the best for state pensioners, and not on his own far left agenda?

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2012/05/ny_comptroller_thomas_dinapoli.html

From Kingston, with Love

There’s a heart shaped, painted wooden sign, stuck in the ground somewhere in the town of Centralia PA. Somewhere in town is the best way to put that, I think, since most of the town’s landmarks have been gone for a long time. The sign reads, to Centralia, with love from Kingston New York.

Fifty years ago, the Centralia fire department set fire to a town dump to help clean up the town for a Memorial Day Celebration, and the fire burns to this day. The town sits above a great many abandoned coal mines, and not long after igniting the blaze the mines caught fire as well. Sulphuric steam rises from breaks in the asphalt that was once Route 61.

A fight ensued between residents who wanted to evacuate, and those who didn’t. The evacuees won out, and by the 1980s over a thousand people had moved away, their homes reduced to rubble by bulldozers.

But some residents refused to leave. It seems not all of the homes and lives were in danger. But for whatever reason, the state decided a few years ago to revisit the issue and ordered those remaining to leave. For those souls who have lived in Centralia without incident for the past 50 years, this is nothing more than a land grab for the coal beneath their feet.

At best this is a well intentioned effort to help landowners. Then again, how often has eminent domain been used for the benefit of property owners?

Oh So Special Interests

Time and time again, we read of "special interest groups" lobbying Congress. President Obama derided special interest groups during his election campaign, declaring they would have no place in his administration. The political left, and I would include the President in this category, are particularly vociferous in their condemnation of special interest groups. Over and over again, the print media and the major television broadcast networks fret over the meddling influence of "big business" over Capitol Hill.

What goes unspoken through the vast majority of these outlets is the influence of left leaning organizations.

The latest salvo in the influence peddling and meddling wars comes from the Service Employees International Union, a 2.1 million member strong organization that spent $85 million in support of the current president's election, and plans to spend an equal amount on his re-election.

The union hopes to field 100,000 workers in eight key battleground states to push our sitting president into another term.

For his part, President Obama has reached out to plenty of special interests during his administration. After deriding Mitt Romney for dealing with private equity firms, the president sidled up to the head of the Blackstone Group, garnering a fundraising dinner.

ABC News' Political Punch commented,

The Obama campaign has framed its about-face decision to support a pro-Democratic super PAC as an effort to counteract “unlimited money from special interests,” particularly corporations, allowed in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

So in framing the argument, the president sees all interests other than those supporting his agenda as special interests. His comments are disingenuous at best. In February of 2011, he banned contributions from

"corporations, political action committees and federally-registered lobbyists offering to help pay for the event. (referring to the 2012 Democratic National Convention)."

It was good PR. But the ban on PAC money only referred to the convention, and in that regard, the president has been true to his word.

http://votesmart.org/interest-groups

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/19/labor-union-limits-focus-to-8-battleground-states/

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-courts-private-equity-cash-at-new-york-fundraiser/

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/obama-to-benefit-from-special-interests-via-super-pac/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/04/obama-ban-2012-convention_n_818992.html

Slots for Tots

Gambling has become a national obsession. The promise of millions of dollars annually has cleared the way for casinos in many states. The state of Maryland now has five casinos, the largest and most lucrative, recently opened adjacent to the Arundel Mills Shopping Center.
Slot machines were legalized in a number of Maryland counties back in the 1940s, generally with the promise that proceeds would pay for children's education and lower property taxes. Stories of bankruptcy, theft, and malfeasance soon followed. Several public officials admitted being approached by interested parties to sell their votes for pro-gambling initiatives. By July of 1968 gambling was once again illegal in the state.
But the lure of a cash flow without raising taxes on the public soon brought a state-wide lottery, with the promise (can you see it coming?) of better educations for the children of the state. Then in 2008, voters (again warned that their children's education would suffer without it) voted for casino gambling.
Before the first slots were set in place, State Senate President Mike Miller began saying that five casinos were not enough. If children were to continue to receive a quality education, a sixth casino (in his home county) would be needed.
Before the largest casino was opened, a state official remarked that revenues were not what they'd expected, and therefore table games should be added to the casinos. Who could argue with such logic? After all, you wouldn't want the children to suffer, would you?
The sad truth is that Maryland is no different than any of the other states with lotteries and/or casinos. Raising taxes on the citizenry costs votes, offering fun and excitement doesn't. But what of the real cost? How about the families devastated by bankruptcy, divorce, or jail time for a loved one because of addiction to gambling?
Gambling is a stealth tax that disproportionately reaches into the pockets of those least able to afford the loss of income. That's not to say those who are well off do not gamble, or suffer from the effects of their gambling. They have the luxury of disposable income.
Casinos are the worst form of taxation. With smiles, bright lights, and good food they promise riches and glory one token at a time.
And the children's education? Somebody please show me a state where the education budget went up in direct proportion to the amount of taxes generated by gambling. The truth is this is a shell game. The money exists for the education budget. Monies that would have been allocated for education are redistributed into other departments, leaving the gambling receipts to cover the load.
Some refer to gambling as the "stupid tax." It's more of a luxury tax. One that a lot of people don't have the luxury to afford.

For a nice study of gambling in MD:
http://maryland-politics.blogspot.com/2008/11/marylands-sordid-slots-history-about-to.html

Some info on the effects of gambling:
http://www.troubledwith.com/AbuseandAddiction/A000000707.cfm?topic=abuse%20and%20addiction%3A%20gambling

NARAL Tosses out the Bathwater

Every state and municipality that has either passed or attempted to pass laws requiring abortion clinics to include mandatory sonograms during treatment has met with vehement opposition to such requirements from, among others, the National Abortion Rights League (NARAL).

So I find it somewhat disingenuous for NARAL to accuse Crisis Pregnancy Centers of that very thing.

“Anyone seeking health-care services should receive comprehensive, unbiased, medically and factually accurate information. Women facing unintended pregnancy deserve no less. When women are fully informed, they are better able to make responsible and appropriate decisions about their reproductive health. Mindful of this, the anti-choice movement has for years tried to restrict, control, and manipulate the information doctors give women facing unplanned pregnancies.” (1)

 
NARAL argues that the Centers, “continue their campaign to misinform women about abortion and to dissuade women from exercising their right to choose…” They also state that, “Women are entitled to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased medical information with which they can make their own decisions.” I would like to know how the inclusion of a sonogram during treatment can be considered biased. And how does the exclusion of a sonogram enhance a woman’s right to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased medical information?

NARAL is a large tax-exempt 501(c), eligible to receive contributions deductible as charitable donations. (2) On NARAL’s website, they say they oppose “bans on safe abortion methods that protect women’s health,” and “Dangerous laws that jeopardize young women’s health and safety,” and “distortions of science to instill fear.”(3)

The truth is they have thwarted attempts to bring abortion clinic regulations in line with existing requirements for any other medical facility. Jeopardizing women’s lives in their view is suggesting they carry their baby full term. And while science pushes steadily back the curtain of “personhood” by showing just how alive and human a baby is earlier and earlier in a pregnancy, and doctors save early births at ever earlier points in pregnancy, they want a blanket thrown over such research and procedures. After all, if a child was a child at delivery before, and at five months of a pregnancy now, what can their organization say when scientists stand up and tell them that all the requirements for human life are complete at conception? That would mean abortion is tantamount to murder.

The government should support legitimate, comprehensive reproductive-health clinics, rather than centers whose goals are to prevent women from exercising their constitutionally protected right to choose. (1)

Is that it? Rights trump human life?

Representative Trent Franks (R-Ariz) introduced into the House of Representatives, H.R.3541, “The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act.” The intent of the legislation is to eliminate the use of abortion to choose the sex of the child, that is to say, aborting a child because the parent(s) wanted a boy instead of a girl, or vice-versa.

Painting the legislation’s supporters as women hating men who oppose prenatal care, equal pay, and contraception, NARAL promises to defeat any law that would prevent a woman from having an abortion for any reason. Nancy Keenan, head of NARAL, sees it as an attack on a woman’s right to choose, and insists NARAL has always been opposed to the use of abortion for sex selection. (4)

Taking her cue from Margaret Sanger, Keenan holds abortion as a sacrosanct right.

I agree with Keenan in that I think the legislation will not have the intended effect. Planned Parenthood and their ilk will no more report sex selection abortions than they have teen rape victims that come to their clinics for abortions.

But I will say dismissing the bill is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Seeing no baby anyway, NARAL will disagree.

(1) http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/media/fact-sheets/abortion-cpcs.pdf

(2) http://www.bbb.org/charity-reviews/national/health/naral-pro-choice-america-foundation-in-washington-dc-507

(3) http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/what-is-choice/abortion/

(4) http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/media/press-releases/2012/pr05292012_prenda.html

The Law of Our Own Land

Unlike the United Kingdom, the United States of America has a written constitution. Arguments can be made pro and con as to the benefit of having an unwritten constitution, but perhaps one in favor of the written variety is that the law is the law. The law can be altered. New laws can be created. But all laws must pass muster by way of meeting Constitutional agreement.
This can cause problems when the letter of the law creates unintended consequences, or when activist jurists reinterpret constitutional law in order to bring it in line with  a particular set of values.
The truth is that the framers of the Constitution were, in large part, men who held a conscious belief in the God of the Bible. Whether they were Baptist, Congregationalist, Lutheran, or Methodist, the writing and thinking process of these men was influenced by their own understanding of the universe, which for them was a Judeo-Christian view.
Today, of course, a great many men and women in the United States either grew up without or chose to ignore the Christian viewpoint, and that is their prerogative.
But it doesn't change the Constitution. We can try to reinterpret it as many do the Bible, placing a "modern" set of values into the text, and proclaiming that red is now orange, blue is now brown.
But like the Bible, the Constitution is not a living document. It survives intact. True, it has been modified a number of times through the amendment process. But there is no lawful approach to Constitutional amendment that flows through Judicial Fiat, nor is there a mechanism in place for the judiciary to consider the laws of foreign lands or societies when deciding a case.
The State of Kansas has enacted legislation ensuring that Sharia Law cannot be considered when a case is brought before state courts.
The shame isn't that they have done so. The shame is that such legislation had to be enacted in the first place.

The Image of Modern Man

As much as women are portrayed through advertisements, music, and movies as sexual objects, men are imagined as objects of ridicule at best and at worst, contempt. Light hearted advertisements targeting women show men making ridiculous purchases as their wives and girl friends shake their head in disbelief. Men struggle to take care of children, fail miserably to keep the kitchen clean, and can't help but ogle every woman within a hundred yards.

While there will always be heroes in movies and on television, unless the male lead is the dashing romantic who women are anxious to fall into bed with, men are inept, bungling, inconsiderate, unfeeling, ready to be trampled upon by the women in their lives.

Gone are the Ward Cleavers and Lucas McCains, who taught their children valuable lessons, while, in Ward's case, his wife was supportive and caring, and in Lucas's, he raised his son Mark on his own.

I suggest we could go a long way toward restoring family values by departing from these trends. We certainly do no one any good by allowing young boys to grow up with images of men as insipid and spineless creatures driven by the basest of instincts and allowing young girls to be inculcated by the sights and sounds of women driven to fit into a size four.

Secret at Seventeen

A teenager has called out Seventeen Magazine for its patently false imaging of young girls in the magazine's photo spreads. Julia Bloom says the magazine's portrayal of young girls does not help the young readership, and in fact, does them harm.

“Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. Those ‘pretty women’ that we see in magazines are fake. They are often Photoshopped, air-brushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life,” Bluhm said.

Kudos to Ms. Bloom for her courage to take a stand. How many women, your and old, have have dealt with terrible self loathing dimply because they do not measure up to a plastic standard that they can never come close to achieving without hardship and surgery?


But Seventeen Magazine is merely a reflection of the greater society in which we live. A society that values image to such an extent that it sacrifices substance. Weight loss advertisements and exercise videos, while occasionally positing products as producing a healthier you, focus on the visual impact using their food supplements, their diet plans, their gym equipment will have on the user's image. Hair treatments tout the product's ability to attract sexual partners, as do clothing lines and beverages.


Sadly, women's rights organizations pay very little attention to the issue, parlaying political acumen into secondary issues such as equal pay and sexual discrimination. The truth is, both of these are the result of the Barbie image, the Victoria's Secret image, the Seventeen Magazine image that is foisted upon men and women and accepted, making women little more than playthings. We can create laws that demand equal pay for equal work, but that doesn't solve the underlying issue.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/05/08/teen-takes-on-seventeen-says-magazine-contributes-to-body-image-issues/#ixzz1uInu1pTF

Sheep

I don't know which irritates me more- The incessant class warfare or the insistence that our children's education and the safety of our streets will be in danger if we don't increase the budget and raise taxes, or the sheep that hear these mantras and take them for gospel.
The lessons learned in the Soviet Union have not transferred to many in this country. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Tell that man he may only keep an ever shrinking fraction of his fish and he will not work as hard, and he will resent those who do nothing and yet share in his catch.
The excuse that taxes must be raised in order to balance a budget is only true to the extent that the budget cannot be reduced to the level of tax receipts. To use the excuse that taxes must be raised or children will suffer and crime will run rampant is equally fallacious. It suggests that there is no way to either reduce the cost of education and public safety or to reduce funding for other programs.
A citizenry that blindly accepts such claims without question deserves what it gets. Far too many people have bought into the notion that big government is in their best interest. The interest of big government is growing big government, creating more and more dependency upon government, and reducing or eliminating the influence of the private sector.

Breaking for tradition, denying reality

Rowan Williams, Arch Bishop of Canterbury, has announced his resignation from the leadership of the Anglican Church and is to be Master at Magdalene College in Cambridge. Since the announcement, he has received praise from many of those who approved of his administration and even many of those who disapproved.
Rowan worked feverishly during his tenure as head of the Church of England to keep the body together. But his high-mindedness obscured his theology. What did he stand for? Many who know him personally say he is a champion of homosexual inclusion in the hierarchy of the church. Yet he spoke publicly of working with both sides of the issue to reach an amicable solution. That's like saying you intend to cheer for both sides in a football match. Either you are secretly favoring one side or the other, or you really don't care who wins. And it really is a case of win or lose.
Centuries of church teaching supports the exclusion of anyone willfully disobedient to the will of God from holding office. In doing so, the church agrees with scripture. But wait, you say, scripture can be interpreted to deny teaching and authoritative positions to women as well yet the church has no problem with that.
And there's the crux.
Church teaching is tradition, and tradition is human and therefore mutable and malleable. It can change with the times. The Bible isn't rewritten. It is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. As long as you consider it to be the authoritative Word of God.
And there's the second crux.
Williams does not accept the authority of scripture. He is part of a brood of teachers and thinkers that began molding the teachings of the Church of England to conform to societal demands over the last few decades. As the church has become more and more secular, it has become more and more irrelevant. Trying to be inclusive, it has ignored the exclusivity of Christ's authority.
In seeking to make the teachings of Christ palatable to those whose lifestyle is in direct opposition to biblical precepts, the church has divorced itself from the deity of Christ.
Let me make this clear. Homosexuality is not the real issue here. Sin is sin regardless of the nature. Sexual immorality is not acceptable by biblical standards, be it between two of the same sex or of different sexes. While Christ emphatically stated His love of everyone, He never displayed love for their sin. The body of believers welcomes (or should) anyone with a desire to learn of God's redemptive plan. No one should be stopped at the door. But just as assuredly, there are biblical standards for leadership with the body.
Living in England in the late nineties, I saw first hand the destruction of biblical authority in the ranks of of the C of E. Visiting a small church in the village of Ripley, I listened to a Priest who calmly and warmly told his congregants that the miracles in the bible were simply teaching tools. "No one seriously believes the world was created in seven days, or that Noah built an ark, he told them, "no more than water was turned into wine, or that Lazarus was raised from the dead."
As for the growing schism that Williams worked so hard to prevent, the seeds of dissent were sprouting before the millennial celebrations had begun. Although the church had long ago removed the necessity of acknowledging biblical authority in its ordination vows, many priests were graduating from seminary and challenging the "orthodoxy" of the current establishment. The turn towards scripture was so pronounced that church leaders were writing articles about what could be done to stop it.
Schisms are not entirely bad. It means that not everyone has forgotten why they wanted the bible as the church's authority in the first place. It's why there are so many Protestant denominations. There always seems to be a remnant willing to stand and fight for the Gospel regardless of attendance numbers or popularity polls.

War in America

Are we in the midst of a Culture War? The battle for the hearts and minds of America's youth has grown steadily over the last 100 years, as leftist philosophies became entrenched first in the collegiate teaching ranks, then the centers of power in the nation's media.
Judge Robert Bork, in Slouching Towards Gomorrah, traces the development of modern liberalism and its impact on one generation after another.  Bork contends the Universities incubated the movement. I would add that liberal politicians enable it, and the press feeds it.
If you can define the terms of a conflict, you're much more likely to win the conflict. This is a lesson that the center and the right in America have been slow to understand and act upon. The most notable of these in our lifetime, it could be argued, involves abortion. Not the labels such as "Pro-Life" or "Anti-Abortion." I'm referring to the point of conflict. By setting the battle lines at a woman's right to control her own body, and not the taking of an innocent life, the left was able to claim the high moral ground. It has taken decades for society to even begin to recognize the reality of the argument.
Now we are at the precipice of conflict once again. This time the battle is over freedom of religion. The first amendment of the Constitution of the United States declares the right of citizens to this freedom and prohibits the government from the establishment of religion. But what has become lost in the public discourse is the next phrase, which guarantees us the right to freely exercise, or behave in accordance with, our religion.
If the government is allowed to force religious institutions of any kind to violate the precepts of the beliefs the institution is based on, that freedom is eroded away. This is where the battle must be enjoined, and where the terms of the conflict must be determined correctly. If liberal ideologists in the mainstream media, Hollywood, and on Capitol Hill, are allowed to couch the argument in favor of free contraceptives for insured employees in terms  that focus on denial of treatment, the battle field will be lost.
The argument must be, and rightly so, that Churches and their ancillary organizations have the constitutional right to freely exercise the religious beliefs they are founded upon.
Are we in the midst of a Culture War? Yes, but more to the point, we are seeing a War against Religion.
C-Cubed