Posted on 04/16/2015 1:32:46 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Mere Orthodoxy’s Matt Anderson explains why “an anti-liberal approach toward dissenting views is part of the DNA of the logic of the current gay rights argument”:
Imagine, for a moment, that cultural conservatives are right that the family which begins within the union of a man and a woman is a morally unique institution, irreplacable in its role in society and inimitable in its shape by other voluntary associations of free adults, such as gay unions….
Then grant this simple premise: that humans are fundamentally and inescapably truth-telling beings, and that falsehoods require an elaborate and complex support structure if they are to take hold and endure for a long period of time. A child might believe that Santa Claus is real and get on with the world just fine. But as they grow older, the kinds of backflips, self-deceptions, and tricks they would have to go through in order to maintain such a belief would be dazzling.
Now, momentarily return to that peculiar and strange thought that same-sex sexual relationships, whatever other goods [they] have, lack particular features which make heterosexual relationships morally unique. Given human sexuality’s clear importance, and given humanity’s truth-telling nature, what kind of artifice would need to be in place to support and sustain such a deception within a society over a long period of time? What kind of intervention into the course of normal human affairs would a society have to undertake in order to obscure the morally relevant differences between those forms of sexual behavior that can generate children and those that cannot? What kind of construct would we have to build in order to maintain the premise that all consenting erotic associations are equal, that the union of the lives of two adults (even where children are introduced via the tragedy beneath adoption or through the artifice of technology) is of the same kind as those families where a man and a woman’s love and life together introduces a third member into the community who bears witness, within their very bodies, of the love of that mother and father for each other and for no one else in a way that removing children from their biological parentage necessarily diminishes? And once this structure is built, would it have the structural integrity to allow for meaningful and public dissent? Or would it be so fragile, because false, that it had to “stamp out” competing accounts of the world?
Erasing or obscuring the moral uniqueness of the traditional nuclear family unit—if there is one— would require, dare I say, both an extensive and elaborate artifice that attempted to reconfigure not simply the family, but all those institutions which the family has some bearing upon. Maintaining such a support would require the most powerful and influential institutions in American life, of which there are currently (by way of hypothesis) three: entertainment, business, and the government. And as long as those dominant institutions established such an outlook on the world, any remaining institutions would come under significant pressure to reform themselves accordingly.
In other words, as Seana Sugrue argued once, same-sex marriage will lead to a soft-despotism because it has to.
Read the rest here.
This is a similar point to the one Frank Beckwith made when he likened bans against interracial marriage to the endorsement of same-sex marriage—both require the intrusive force of law to maintain because neither reflects the truth about what marriage is, either denying sex is relevant or insisting race is.
There is nothing “soft” about the despotism displayed by the gaystopo in this country....
Lost me here. Humans find it easier to lie than tell the truth. The truth is difficult and can be painful.
btt
str is a great organization
Which is why you continually confront such apparent contradictions as liberals who claim to be champions of the working man but who insist on open borders that threaten working-class jobs. Or feminists who crucify Clarence Thomas on the flimsiest of accusations but remain silent while charge after charge is brought against Bill Clinton, with undeniable evidence. Or tax-and-spend politicians who claim that taking even more money from hard-working citizens actually helps them by ensuring that the money is well spent, despite an uninterrupted string of failures by the government to safeguard its fiscal duties. Or how more and more regulation somehow moves us to greater and greater freedom. Or how "Arbeit Macht Frei."
You know, the "elaborate structures" we used to call "lies."
“Then grant this simple premise: that humans are fundamentally and inescapably truth-telling beings...”
Um, when your premise starts off demonstrably wrong, why should I grant it?
Over time the lies are hard to maintain, that is his point. At least as I read it.
Speaking of “tolerance” ( note the quotes )...
I predict that the next front in the battle to accept ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ or any form of marriage other than traditional one will be against the devout CHRISTIAN chaplains of the military ( forget the liberal ones, they already will perform the ceremony, it’s the devout ones who must be made to conform ).
I believe Chaplains are given military RANKS and receive a salary. Therefore, it will be but logical in the eyes of the gay lobby to target this group.
If a devout chaplain refuses to perform a gay wedding, he will be stripped of his rank and dishonorably discharged.
Once this front is defeated, the next front will then be the Christian churches.
How you ask? STRIP THEM OF THEIR TAX EXEMPTION STATUS!
It’s a longstanding principle of natural law that God has wired the soul of man to know the truth at some level, even though it may be buried under many layers of lies. It is only the fully reprobate who have so seared their conscience that they can no longer respond to the truth teller within them. But anyone who can experience guilt is still in range of hearing the law of God written on the heart.
Natural law theorists take this principle as the basis for forming the moral consensus of the social contract. We condemn murder because as fractured as we are, we can still access that as a universal principle of right versus wrong.
But enter the Marxists. Their vision is some idealized icon of equality. Moral truth to them is just a construct the advantaged use to maintain their power. All inequality stems from difference, and so all differences must be eliminated. Women must be like men, able to play the field without consequences. So there must be abortion. Children raised in nuclear heterosexual families will perpetuate patriarchal oppression forever unless stopped, so family must be redefined to be genderless, with default parental authority defaulting back to the state. All moral differences created by religious belief are an impediment to equality utopia, and therefore must be stamped out. To the Marxist who takes his religion seriously, the future is an unending sea of gray, androgynous, amoral poverty. Yay. Not. These criminals must be stopped.
Peace,
SR
Recognition of the truth, and telling the truth are two separate things. You’re making the argument for universal recognition of the truth, at some level. That’s not a claim the author made, although he might have been better off making that argument instead.
I doubt you could make a similar argument that “truth-telling” is some universal and fundamental human trait. We lie as easily as we breathe, and nobody even needs to teach that habit to us. Children do it almost as soon as they can talk. I’m sure some do it even earlier, for example, pointing at their sibling when the parent comes home and finds a mess :)
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