I am deeply concerned about two issues in the public eye. At first they may appear to be unrelated, but they both point toward disaster for the future of the United States.
The first issue is gay marriage. For millions who adhere to the three major monotheistic religions, the phrase "gay marriage" is an oxymoron at best and an immoral union at worst. Without commenting on the nature or morality of private sexual activity between consenting adults, what is lost is this debate is the fundamental definition of family and what kind of "unit" is essential to a free society.
The American Experiment in representative democracy depends upon conscious and unconscious adherence to basic moral values. Our founders assumed that American citizens would be hard-working, honest, law-abiding, and loyal to family, clan and community. Marital fidelity and sexual discipline were critical virtues that unleashed the energy and inventiveness that formed the greatest nation in the history.
When Martin Luther King marched for Civil and Voting Rights for millions of disenfranchised people, he did so with a call to faith, moral rectitude, and a renewal of ideals held by all Americans. He and his colleagues took for granted the nuclear and extended family that included lifetime loyalty of husband and wife.
No civilization in history has ever questioned the primacy of the husband-wife relationship, even those cultures that wink at homosexual activity or other departures from "the norm."
The present call to equalize gay unions with heterosexual ones ignores biology, family psychology (ideally, Johnny needs a Mommy and a Daddy), history and sociology. Please notice that I have deliberately left out religious opinions, because they are so divisive. I think the great religions deserve consideration, for it is Monotheism that gace birth to morality and the legal traditions that uphold order.
The second issue is abortion. "Not another column on abortion!" you may cry. Recent attempts to have an unborn child considered a person in the case of a pregnant woman's murder have exposed the anti-child lobbies for who they really are. Several states will charge a person with double murder if an expectant mother is killed. Pro-choice advocates are so afraid of any opening that might restrict a woman's right to destroy her unborn, being-born or just-born child that they will not grant personhood to the tiniest victims of violence.
How are these issues related? Gay marriage and refusing to accept the personhood of the unborn are the twin sides of a chilling plot to undermine our very notions of life, morality and responsibility. Gay marriages can not naturally yield the next generation or unveil the male/female balance essential to emotional health. Refusing to see the unborn as persons makes all babies expendable. We are living in the first generation that realizes they were (and are?) expendable if they get in the way of the selfish needs of parents.
Gay marriage and abortion are, at their roots, a repudiation of life and the ultimate enthronement of the human ego as the only sovereign in life.
Without the value of life and the priority of family structures to gurantee our future, we sacrifice humankind's long-term health on an altar of self-destructive hedonism.
The American Experiment will end if we do not reaffirm first principles that value all life and ensure our future as a nation, even as a species.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
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