The extreme radicalism of homosexual “marriage”

(Note: This entry contains a discussion about how liberalism—or, to be more precise, the dominance of liberalism—can be ended.)

Gary Bauer lays out some of the larger consequences to society if same-sex “marriage” is legalized—namely the banishment of the ordinary concepts of marriage and sexuality, and the punishment of organizations and individuals who continue to disapprove of homosexual marriage and homosexual conduct. He writes:

If same-sex marriage is approved across America, schools would be required to teach that homosexual and heterosexual behavior are morally equivalent; references in school textbooks to “mom” and “dad” and “wife” and “husband” would have to be removed. High schools would be prohibited from having prom kings and queens, and gender specific sports teams may even have to be eliminated.

Further:

We have already seen a preview of things to come in Massachusetts, where Catholic Charities of Boston was forced to close its doors because the court-imposed same-sex marriage law required that all adoption agencies offer services to same-sex couples. Catholic Charities, Boston’s largest and most respected adoption organization, was forced out of business because it refused to violate its most fundamental beliefs about the meaning of human sexuality and its link to marriage and family.

I did not know about the Massachusetts case. This is as bad as what has happened in Britain under the Sexual Orientation Regulations. The SOR banned, without exception, all discrimination against homosexuals in the provision of goods and services in the United Kingdom, and thus forced Catholic adoption agencies to go out of existence because they declined to adopt to same-sex couples. I took this event to mean that Britain had officially ceased to be a free society. Which means that the same is now true about Massachusetts. And it has happened because of same-sex marriage.

Just as to eliminate discrimination against homosexuals is not merely to treat homosexuals “decently,” but to prohibit traditional morality and force the closure of institutions based on traditional morality, to legalize same-sex marriage is not just to include new types of couples in the institution of marriage, it is to prohibit the normal notion of marriage. Discrimination is the master key to this conceptual engineering. The use of the words “husband” and “wife” imply that heterosexual marriages are “privileged” over same-sex marriages, because “husband” and “wife” only apply to heterosexual couples and not to same-sex couples; and therefore “husband” and “wife” are discriminatory and exclusionary and must not be used. To get rid of discrimination and exclusion, heterosexual couples must be referred to in the same terms used for same-sex couples, as “partner” and “partner.” Similarly, “mother” and “father” must changed to “parent” and “parent.”

The legalization of same-sex marriage forces society to redefine heterosexual marriage so as to conform it to same-sex marriage. But to conform heterosexual marriage to same-sex marriage is to eliminate heterosexual marriage as heterosexual marriage. Yes, men and women will still be allowed to marry. But the concept of a man and woman being married, the idea of there being a special meaning and purpose in the marital bond of a man and woman, will be prohibited. Under the same-sex marriage regime, the only meanings that will be legally attributable to heterosexual marriage will be the meanings attributable to same-sex marriage, that is, marriage as the co-habitation of two individuals of undetermined sex who are “committed” to each other and want to live together in a “sexual” relationship—with any kind of genital-genital, genital-oral, or genital-anal contact equally defined as “sex.”

Clearly, heterosexual marriage and same-sex marriage are mutually, fatally incompatible with each other. If same-sex marriage is established, the most fundamental and familiar notions of human life and society will be liquidated in a manner that the social engineers of 20th century totalitarianism could not have imagined.

Yet the left describes this unimaginable Orwellian restructuring of society as mere “fairness” that only an irrational bigot could oppose.

Therefore, every time we debate the homosexual marriage issue, we need to bring to the fore some of these consequences that people have never thought about and ask them, “Do you want the words, “I hereby pronounce you husband and wife,” to be eliminated from marriage ceremonies and replaced by, “I hereby pronounce you partner and partner”? Do you want the words, “father and mother,” expunged from family law and replaced by terms such as “first parent” and “second parent”? Do you want a married man and woman to be treated by law, custom, religion, education, literature, and cinema and as though they were the equivalent of two homosexual men living together? Is this what you really want? Because if homosexual marriage goes through, this is what you will have.”

And these are just the conceptual and verbal aspects of same-sex marriage, which will entail a tyrannical recasting of our language. I have not gone into the concrete effects this insane policy would have on families and society. I discussed some of them in a talk I gave at New York University in 2005.

- end of initial entry -

Dana A. writes:

Since it at this point seems unequivocally true that no-fault divorce in fact permanently and fatally destroyed heterosexual marriage and that gay marriage is just picking at the corpse, why is there no organized conservative opposition to no-fault divorce?

LA replies:

Now you’re thinking correctly and like a traditionalist. To cure each and any of the specific ills of modern liberalism requires rejecting modern liberalism itself—the belief in a world of equal human selves with no natural, social, or spiritual reality as a source of recognized authority above or outside those equal human selves (except via special dispensation of the unprincipled exception). But no one, including the conservatives, can imagine rejecting modern liberalism. No-fault divorce is a typical expression of modern liberalism. No-fault divorce renders marriage an at-will contract (a contract instantly dissolvable on the wish of either party), and thus destroys the very concept of marriage as an institution that has a meaning and reality unto itself, larger than the wishes of the individuals participating in it. Once marriage has lost its transcendent reality and become a mere expression of the momentary whims of the participants, marriage becomes anything that people want it to be, including marriage between two individuals of the same sex. To object to that is to object to the equal freedom of those who desire same-sex marriage, and is thus an act of irrational bigotry.

Greco writes:

Speaking of the cultural fallout of legalized gay marriage, get ready for this headline from the home page of the Los Angeles Times today … “Gay marriage may be a gift to California’s economy.” The teaser paragraph on the home page says: “Demand for same-sex marriages, long pent up, is expected to cause a windfall for bakers, photographers and hotels.”

I’m sorry, but that’s funny. Is there a word to describe something that is so NOT the point as to be comical? And is this really front-page news … that it’s a boon for bakers? (And tuxedo rental shops too, probably … from the lesbian customers alone!) Maybe if the whole country got behind this gay marriage thing, we could bake our way right out of this recession …

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Your arguments about the wider consequences of homosexual “marriage” are well put. Whenever someone asks that obtuse question, “How will any of this affect your marriage?” I am always reminded of the fact that military men absolutely will not award medals of honor or distinction to service animals. Dogs, no matter how apparently heroic their acts of sacrifice courage, are simply not allowed to receive the same formal recognition as soldiers. Why? Because every military man realizes what it will do to his own Purple Heart or Bronze Star, should it be awarded to dogs, cats, lizards, and parakeets. I think there is something parallel going on here. My marriage is affected because it has been redefined, without my consent, to mean something it did not mean before, and because the special honor that attaches itself to my marriage has been stripped away by the inclusion of a totally different order of relationship.

The worst part is, of course, that everybody knows this. I don’t believe anyone is so stupid that he can’t see how gay “marriage” affects society in general, and the married couples within it.

Terry Morris writes:

You wrote:

” … to legalize same-sex marriage is not just to include new types of couples in the institution of marriage, it is to prohibit the normal notion of marriage.”

It’s even worse than that. There is a faction out there which says that in order to stop “gay marriage” from becoming reality we have to redefine the institution of marriage as a “civil contract between one man and one woman and the government in which the principals agree to have children as THE validating term of the contract.” This redefining of the sacred institution of marriage would, say its proponents, prohibit the gay lobby’s abuse of the equal protection provision in the constitution. The marriage contract, under this proposal, would be meaningless and indefensible (from all sides) unless and until production of offspring began. So in order to stop “gay marriage” we have to prohibit the normal notion of marriage.

I wrote about this “solution” to the “gay marriage” problem in an entry at my blog yesterday. The relevant link(s) which lead to the source is there if you’re interested.

Dana replies:

I am not a traditionalist by your measure, I am more what I would refer to as “unreconstructed” by leftism/liberalism. I utterly reject the very first premises of leftism/liberalism.

Point in fact, I do not believe the state should have a monopoly on the granting of the status of marriage at all, a monopoly I do not believe it had until the early teens of the 20th century.

[Dana then goes into a long libertarian argument on marriage.]

LA replies:

I don’t want to get into that libertarian argument, I’ve dealt with it before and I just don’t think it’s helpful to this issue at all. In, say, 1920 the state had a monopoly on marriage, and there was very little divorce.

Dana replies:

I agree there, BUT—leftism hadn’t already infiltrated the institutions yet. In 1920 I would NOT have been a “libertarian”, there would have been no need to be, almost all humans had normal pre-leftist views and the FEW GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS THAT EXISTED reflected them and no one could imagine what they would be twisted into 80 years later. Think about the date you chose, public schooling was limited, almost all the government spoils we know today hadn’t come into existence yet, or mainly existed on a state level (which is fine).

My question, given that the left DOES exist, NOW and DOES control the institutions—how do you take back those institutions without 1st dismantling them to some extent? You and I both want liberalism/leftism to die, but what is your solution? I know that sans government bureaucracy there can be no leftism, leftism would then die, then maybe we could have institutions again?

How do you propose terminating the viral meme of leftism?

LA replies:

I’ve never proposed terminating leftism. The human power doesn’t exist to terminate it. Leftism is false, irrational, and destructive, but it is powerful because it derives its power from rebelling against all the inequalities and hierarchies of existence, of which there is no end. Because leftism, meaning the viral meme of leftism, the urge to leftism, is driven by a rebellion against the naturally unequal order of being, and thus is a shadow of the truth against which it is rebelling, leftism is as large and extensive as truth itself. Therefore leftism, while it may be contained by prevailing traditional or non-leftist social forces, cannot be destroyed. It can only destroy itself, either by (a) creating such intolerable social and moral disorder that people stop believing in it; or (b) destroying its host society, Western civilization, and with the host, the parasite (leftism) dies as well.

Therefore our only hope is that the first scenario occurs. We can help it along, by relentlessly attacking leftism and showing its falsity, and by offering a true and practical alternative to it, so that when people start to turn away from leftism, they will have something else to which to turn.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

With each new liberal outrage perpetrated by our organs of government, I become ever more convinced that the single most important question that conservatives, “independents,” and all others who reject the far-left agenda of today’s political and cultural elite must ask themselves is: Why do they acquiesce? Why do they obey these rulings? Have we truly become, to use Michael Savage’s term, a nation of sheeple? It sure seems like it.

On many of the most important issues of the day (especially so-called “social” issues), a clear majority of the American people rejects the far-left agenda. Yet they accept it. They obey the laws and court rulings, however corrupt, undemocratic, or unconstitutional; they pay their taxes, however confiscatory and wasteful; they send their kids to public schools, where their children are indoctrinated with liberal propaganda and taught to despite their country, but not taught to use their mental abilities to their maximum potential; they let the government tell them how to run their businesses; they let the government tell them who can join their clubs and fraternal organizations; they let the government limit their political speech; they even let the government tell them what they can and cannot eat, drink, and smoke.

The liberal elite must be amazed at how easily they are able to dominate and control the nation. For example, all they have to do is convince a handful of judges to issue a sweeping new ruling, and thousands and millions of Americans fall quickly into line—including, most critically, members of the police and military who themselves overwhelmingly reject the very laws and court rulings that they, ultimately, are responsible for enforcing.

Why do the American people bow down so willingly to liberal tyrants?

Until we have a good answer to this question, I’m afraid that no conservative or traditionalist “counter-reformation” will be possible.

LA replies:

The short answer, as I’ve put it many times, is that virtually all modern Western people, whatever they may call themselves, are liberals, and so they accede to liberalism. And therefore the only escape from the horrible situation you accurately describe is that modern Western people cease to be liberals, and so start to resist liberalism instead of going along with it.

Does that answer work for you?

LA continues:

By the way, the absolute, undeniable proof that virtually all modern Western people are liberals is seen in the fact that the West is willingly allowing the mass immigration of followers of a religion that is committed to the West’s subjugation and destruction, and that with only a tiny handful of exceptions, not even the most vocal critics of that religion will call for the cessation of that immigration. I don’t care what people’s excuses are for not talking about it. In my book, people who are unwilling to say that a religion committed to our subjugation and destruction doesn’t belong among us, are liberals, period.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

I think your analysis is largely correct, but I don’t think it explains the situation of the offended, angry, right-leaning person who nevertheless grits his teeth and goes along with each new liberal outrage. In my experience, there are many people in the country like this. If you asked them, they certainly would not agree that they are acquiescing because, deep down, they share the fundamental premises of liberalism. I think there is something else, or at least in addition, that explains their (our) cowardly refusal to stand up to the liberal elites who are running this country. Perhaps it is nothing more than an unhealthy respect for authority (especially the court system). How much worse do things have to get before the fundamental legitimacy of our government is eroded to such an extent that people stop obeying its edicts? Or will that point never be reached?

LA replies:

But aren’t you really pointing to the argument I make all the time? That conservatives don’t like various things about liberalism, but they don’t oppose them either, because they lack non-liberal principles? They lack a ground to stand on which is separate from liberalism? So they have no way of articulating what it is they don’t like about liberalism, and they also have no way to stand up to the attacks that would inevitably come at them as soon as they spoke up against liberalism?

Alan Roebuck writes (June 3):

In your response to Dana’s question, you said:

Therefore leftism cannot be defeated. It can only destroy itself, either by (a) creating such intolerable social and moral disorder that people stop believing in it; or (b) destroying its host society, Western civilization, and with the host, the parasite (leftism) dies as well. [LA note: For greater clarity, after this discussion was initially posted, I changed my comment that Mr. Roebuck is quoting here.]

I see a third alternative, which is the inverse of the process by which leftist ideas, once held only by a minority of thinkers, came to dominate Western Civilization: We can “evangelize” people with the good news that liberalism is false. Since all of the institutions currently dominated by the left were once dominated by non-leftist thinking, this inverse process is possible.

And we don’t need to eliminate liberalism. We only need to end its dominance over Western Civilization.

In answer to Steven Warshawsky’s question, “Why do the American people bow down so willingly to liberal tyrants?”:

I would say: most fundamentally because all of the institutions that have the highest authority to tell people what is real and true (chiefly the schools and the news media) relentlessly tell people that liberalism is real and true. Additionally, the left controls the institutions which make things happen, and so they can always block tangible opposition to their policies. Finally, America is still relatively sound in a crude physical sense, and so it is easy for people to convince themselves that all is still basically OK: The economy is still sound, the infrastructure still functions well, and there are large regions where it is still possible to live a physically safe and pleasant life.

LA replies:

That’s such a bold thing you’re saying. You’ve said it before. I guess I’ve never adopted it as my own because it seems so difficult. But you’re right. It is the way way we ought to be thinking. As you have said before, there’s never been an organized effort to persuade people that liberalism is wrong.

But can you imagine such an effort actually succeeding in “converting” enough people as to have an impact on the society as a whole?

What would such an effort consist of? Do you have even an imaginary idea of what it would be like? Can you give us a scenario?

And what would we be giving people in place of liberalism? Traditionalism? How specific would this traditionalism have to be? Remember what Jim Kalb said, any non-liberal value as the ruling value in place of liberalism would enough to end the dominance of liberalism. For as you correctly said, “We don’t need to eliminate liberalism. We only need to end its dominance over Western Civilization.” So it doesn’t have to be a complete transformation of everything, just a shifting of priorities, so that values that people have now, say nation or religion, or traditional morality, which are secondary to liberalism, are made primary, while liberalism becomes secondary.

Tim W. writes (June 3):

To address two topics you’ve raised today (political lies & same-sex “marriage”), did you notice how quickly Governor Arnold switched sides once the four robed tyrants on the California Supreme Court handed down their ruling? He was elected on a pledge of opposing same-sex “marriage,” yet he has now announced that he will oppose a state constitutional amendment to overturn the ruling. He has even expressed hope that the state economy will benefit from homosexuals coming there to “wed” one another. The rapidity of his switch indicates to me that he never was opposed to this outrage to begin with.

All three of the remaining major presidential candidates claim to oppose same-sex “marriage,” but no intelligent person could possibly believe them. They assert that there’s no need for a federal marriage amendment now because the U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t yet usurped the power to rewrite our marriage laws and traditions on this matter. But once they do, Obama, Hillary, and McCain will piously declare it a done deal and oppose overturning the ruling because it would be too “divisive” to fight city hall. Within no time they’ll be jackbooting everyone into acquiescence, while any remaining opponents are deemed fodder for “diversity re-education.”

Our Founding Fathers, who stood up to a British Crown far less tyrannical, would be appalled by how apathetic, dependent, ignorant, and obedient our liberalized population has become.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 02, 2008 01:20 AM | Send