In recent times, there has been a development quite odd and unprecedented in the annals of the sexual “revolution.” When America’s traditional sexual mores started to break down, it always took the form of slouching toward “tolerance.” For example, consider fornication. Two unmarried opposite-sex individuals cohabitating was once known as “living in sin” and was not something any couple could do in their community. But as pedophile Alfred Kinsey’s fraudulent science and the phenomenon whereby, as Confucius said, no one likes “virtue as much as sex” eroded moral barriers, this started to change. And then one thing led to another, people did their thing, and, over time, tolerance resulted as a matter of course (I’m not implying this is a good thing).
Now, notable here — notable only because of the aforementioned development — is that fornicators never called for government benefits; they never beat the drum for civil unions. They never started lobbying groups. And the worst those objecting to their practices were called was prudes or Puritans; no one ever thought to brand them bigots or make “Forniphobe” a repeated-to-staleness neologism. And, of course, anyone who hasn’t been asleep for the last 20 years knows exactly what I’m analogizing here.
This brings me to an article in The Week by Damon Linker. He writes that while he supports faux marriage, he is also
troubled by the equally stunning lack of charity, magnanimity, and tolerance displayed by many gay marriage advocates.
They don’t just want most Americans to recognize and affirm the equal dignity of their relationships. They appear to want and expect all Americans to recognize and affirm that equal dignity, under penalty of ostracism from civilized life.
That is an unacceptable, illiberal demand.
Linker’s surprise indicates that he doesn’t know his fellow leftists very well. He also then, by complaining that he isn’t happy with the “sloppy way the most strident gay-marriage proponents have been throwing around the term ‘bigotry,’” reveals his status: nice useful idiot. There are only two other categories of leftists, by the way, and they constitute the majority of the passionate. One would be the users.
The other group is mean useful idiots.
Speaking of which, there are only two reasons why the homosexual lobby spews the bigot charge.
One is hatred.
Disparaging another with damaging names not even remotely correlative to what the person is, and thus not the product of reason, is an emotion-driven practice. And that emotion isn’t love. It is a deep-seated animosity driving one to want to hurt his target with “verbal violence,” which, though I reject the designation in law and social code, would make it “hate speech.”
The second reason the bigot label is applied is simple.
It works.
It’s a rhetorical device used to silence opposition.
This is why Barack Obama was never called a bigot, even though he opposed faux marriage less than two years ago. You see, homosexual activists didn’t hate Obama. They also knew something: Obama’s upholding of marriage was poorly acted political theater (note that, as a supporter of faux marriage in 1996, Obama was for it before he was against it before he was for it). It was always clear he would atavistically “evolve” as the culture devolved.
Speaking of cultural devolution brings us to my main point. G.K. Chesterton predicted in 1926, “THE next great heresy is going to be simply an attack on morality; and especially on sexual morality…. The madness of tomorrow is not in Moscow, but much more in Manhattan.” We are now reaching a watershed moment in this heresy’s advance — and few understand its significance.
To grasp this civilizational turning point, let’s again contrast fornicators’ attitude with the homosexual lobby’s. If, let’s say, you got a little pad with your girlfriend, the word in the family might be to not let grandma know. But now we’re confronted with a very odd situation: At the same time this is going on, your homosexual brother can move in with a man, flaunt his relationship, and if grandma dare utter a disapproving word, left-wing activists won’t be happy unless she’s fired from her job, scorned in the community, ostracized from her bridge club and has her home vandalized. It’s not enough to just keep her in the dark — she must be condemned as having a heart of darkness.
We should first ask: Does this sound like a healthy movement to you? But then there’s another little matter. Let’s say traditionalists gave the new heretics everything they wanted and, to avoid the bigot charge (though I doubt their sins could be expiated as easily as Obama’s), dispensed with even the intimation that homosexual behavior is sinful. What do you say to little Johnny about sexual matters?
Oh, I know, rainbows and Daddy’s Roommate. That’s not my point. Let’s say you tell him how everyone knows what Lance and Dale living down the street are up to, and that’s just their preference, and objecting to it is some grave moral trespass. How can you then say, with any credibility and ability to influence, “I know, son, you’re burning with desire for your girlfriend, but wait till marriage”? How do you even say he should wait until he’s “old enough”? Don’t you see a little incongruence there? It’s a bit like telling a kid that it’s okay to smoke crack — but you’re destroying the temple of the soul if you puff on Marlboros.
So while traditionalists are often accused of singling out homosexuals, the truth is that homosexuals singled themselves out — for special treatment under law, and now under religious teaching. Authentic Christianity doesn’t just identify homosexual behavior as sinful, but also fornication, bestiality, auto-eroticism and, well, consult a catechism if you want chapter and verse. It provides a model for man’s sexuality. And the special dispensation the homosexual lobby demands for their behavior cannot be offered in isolation; grant it, and that whole model — which we consider God’s plan for sexuality — collapses. Little other than forcible rape will be off limits.
While this is precisely what the libertines want, most will learn that you should be careful what you wish for. Because when homosexual activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen said in 1989 that once they had achieved a “major realignment solidly in favour of gay rights, the intransigents (like the racists of twenty years ago) will eventually be effectively silenced by both law and polite society,” it was actually an understatement. Consider this implication: the Catholic Church’s sexual teachings are definitive and not subject to change. So the Church — along with all traditionalist Christians — is in a box. They must stand on Truth, but this means that, increasingly, they will be viewed as akin to the KKK. Good way to get the young to reject Christianity, huh?
Even this, however, is not the culmination of our sexual heresy. As I and others have pointed out, there are now movements afoot to legitimize pedophilia and bestiality (Denmark already has “animal bordellos”), using the very same arguments the homosexual lobby trotted out a generation past.
And so it goes. “Conservative” Ross Douthat, conceding cultural and legal defeat in the marriage arena, recently wrote in The New York Times that there must be “terms of surrender” for religious conservatives. He doesn’t know modern liberals any better than does Linker.
The Left doesn’t take prisoners.
This is a fight to the death — winner take all.
What our sexual heretics don’t know, however, and will be shocked to learn, is that the only thing they’re winning is a dead civilization.
